A Few Common Tree Species Make Up Half of Tropical Rainforests

 By Richard B. Primack

“This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever….Thank God they cannot cut down the clouds!” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

A recently published study of over one million trees from 1,568 locations found that just 2% of tree species make up 50% of the total number of trees in tropical forests across Africa, the Amazon, and Southeast Asia. Each continent’s forests consist of the same proportions of a few common species and many rare species. 

Figure 1: Dots show the locations of forest plots used in the study. 

The study scientists estimate that just 1,053 species account for half of the planet’s 800 billion tropical forest trees. The other half are comprised of 46,000 tree species, many of which are rare. 

Photo 1: Measuring trees at Bako National Park, Malaysia.

 

These findings suggest that by focusing attention on these relatively few common tree species, we can probably predict how the whole forest will respond to global climate change. This is especially important because tropical forests contain a tremendous amount of stored carbon, and are a globally important carbon sink.

Photo 2: Lainie Qie records data in the field.

 

The study is also significant because it involved hundreds of scientists cooperating to assemble a gigantic international data base.

Here is the citation to the paper and a LINK:

Declan Cooper, Simon Lewis ... RB Primack, et. al, 2024. Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities. Nature